Rains
by Ryam
Summary: A oneshot set in season 9 or 10. Luka's in the Congo, Abby's in Chicago... and it's raining...


Disclaimer: I don't own Luka, Abby, or any of the characters in ER. Oh well.

A/N: A one-shot set around the end of season nine and the beginning of season 10. Luka is in the Congo and Abby is of course in Chicago... This is my first attempt, so please let me know what you think (and thanks!)

Rains.

When the African heavens opened and pellets of water hit the scratchy soil and the roof and the car out front and the heavy, heavy leaves, he left the girl's side, stepped out, and watched. The jungle around him was collapsing under an avalanche of rain. He saw green stalks floating past in tiny rivers, their loose roots already pushed up out of the ground; and he imagined the guns and the tanks in the distance floating away with them: away away until they reached the ocean and disappeared to the bottom for good. He willed the soldiers' dyed camouflage to run right off and leave them all dressed in white: blank canvases, clean slates. These rains looked like they could clean anything.  
He so wanted to be clean.  
Out on the 'clinic' platform he was alone, all the people and the bandages and the aching behind that door he had so gratefully closed: his thoughts were his, only. He thought of Chicago, a universe away, but curiously more real than the world behind the door seemed right then. He thought of his apartment. He thought of the man who ran the coffee kiosk on the street. He thought of her, and her again.  
He watched the earth begin to pool at the bottom of the steps, and there all his memories and dreams and loves and lusts pooled too, until not one could be separated from the other and they all seemed as real as the folding jungle around him. The sweet-smelling soil brought her before his eyes, smelling sweet of shampoo, out of the shower. One strand of hair ran a muddy river down her forehead. Water drops collected above her lip and on her eyelashes; and he wanted desperately to kiss them away, to suck them, to lick them off. He felt he would bite into her skin, all over, so urgent was this desire to delve into it completely again. But instead he watched her; he watched her in his mind's eye; and he burned even in this torrential Congo rain.

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In Chicago, the sidewalks were covered in that paste of dirt and grit that sticks to the bottom of your only clean pair of jeans, and sometimes ends up halfway up the back of your leg when it flicks behind you.  
It was raining; a half-hearted, lethargic sort of rain, relentless in its own lazy way. Abby thought it a fitting enough reflection of several areas of her life right then: lethargic, half-hearted, relentless in a lazy sort of way... She leaned against the sheltered wall of the ambulance bay and watched the water drip-dropping from the roof over her head, adding to shallow puddles and that goddam paste of dirt in a pattern that she was watching mindlessly, like it was a late-night infommercial. She had a sudden urge to be somewhere else, to do something else, to be someone else. Luka was off braving the heart of Africa, and here she was watching rain. She had been thinking about him often recently, wishing him home as one wishes for the support of an old friend, the familiar face of an old flame... heck, at this stage the whole _hospital_ could do with the fresh energy, a bit of enthusiasm. She felt like everything, down to the half-ass weather, was lacking in passion; and Luka had passion in bucket-loads.

She thought herself two years back, to a day when the weather was just like this. She came home with her clothes sticking to her in uncomfortable places and her hair clinging to her cheeks. He was dry, crisp, warm. He led her towards the shower and when she was finished she threw on some baggy clothes and emerged still damp, towelling her hair. He watched her intently from across the bedroom. He was raggy-looking. She wanted him to touch her; and then, right on cue, he crossed suddenly over to her. He traced her face with his nose, as if he was memorising it in minute detail, then sank his mouth in under her ear, licking off the water drops and pressing into her neck.  
Abby bit her lip in the ambulance bay.  
She remembered how afterwards they had clung together like they were drowning; which, she could see now, they were.  
But oh God, if only they hadn't been.

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Luka pulled away the towel slowly from his vision and ran his hand through its hair, feeling the wet between his fingers. Her scalp was hot as Congo earth, and ran with blood. He touched her face with his nose, breathing in deeply. Yes beautiful as Congo earth, beneath him she ran with blood;  
and he ran with blood;  
and they both pulsed with it;  
and their skin was sticking with sweat and wet and now they were in a river of mud, a river of her hair, writhing together, clinging like insects in the rains, desperate, soaking, carried away. In his ecstasy he clutched a fistful of bedsheets, but it was soil, and crumbled in his hand;  
no, it was air;  
it was nothing.  
The rains stopped as suddenly as they had come, like God letting out a clap. Luka looked at the still pool a minute longer, the scattering of little green stalks. Then the girl's mother called out; and he went back inside.


End file.
